A sense of grandeur

If you are anything like me, you’re possessed with what I’ll call a certain sense of grandeur. Go on, admit it. Don’t be shy. There’s nothing wrong with having one. You are all gifted up, but with nowhere to go. Am I right?
 
Greatness lies within you, just as soon as you coax it out. You could save the world if you wished, if you only knew how. All your life you’ve racked your brain for the 'right' thing to do, the one cause to be involved with. Not this, not that—you’ve avoid everything that doesn’t completely fit the bill. You have an infinite number of options.
 
Checking through to choose the best has meant that you’ve had to reject most of them. Extraneous activity has felt like an indulgence. Deep down, listening to music or working on your fitness—even developing relationships—has most likely felt like a waste of time—not a good prescription for happiness.  You bear a cross: the need to delve for deeper meaning.
 
You know in your bones that you’ve something to do, something unique, and you’re quite prepared to make the sacrifice required. You’ve lost patience with your peers and the fussy little hobgoblins of their existence. You’re after the bigger picture, and you can almost sense it. It’s out there on the edge of your periphery, at the tip of your tongue.

Go on, say it. Everyone loves a good conspiracy. The broader it reaches and the deeper it penetrates, the juicier is its taste. And the best one of all is the one that contains the total. It consumes us. It fools us. We cannot break free if we tried. It is an integral part of life’s fabric. Without it, life as we know it could not go on. If we were freed from it, we’d most likely be lost.
 
A good conspiracy quivers at the edge of belief. That is what makes it so tantalizing and titillating. Surely it could not be true, but it might be. It might just conceivably be true. I can almost allow myself to believe it. It intrigues us. It teases us. Oh, if only if it were true. Just imagine!

Fairy tale

Disconnect.

Where am I?

I had everything clear in my head just now—wonderful lines that swept and swooped and slid across the page, but they’ve emerged chopped and broken. They clatter upon the page, clunkenly. 

This damned conspiracy doesn’t want me to succeed. It resists and hinders me. It swivels my head towards the window and glazes my eyes over. Window-gazing. Windows glazing. I’m turning into a zombie. No, foul spot, no! I need to finish my story during the day before the clock strikes midnight and I turn into a vampire. Forgive me if I sound a little rushed (or stoned) but if you’ve accompanied me this far you’ll understand.

I scramble back to our original point of departure.

“This is not her story,” wrote Douglas Adams, alluding to the Rickmansworth girl. I’ve since revealed that her story is mine—and yours too if you want a slice of the action.

But if time and opportunity are so limited, why do I bother with stories at all? Why not tell it to you straight—do an article, write a thesis, or take out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times? Isn’t a narrative just a work of fiction? Why spend all that time, you ask, on something that isn’t even factual? A good read is all a work of fiction can aspire to, surely.

Not so. According to John Michael Greer, stories are extremely powerful. He claims that they’re the tools we use to understand the world. Not only do they contain lessons and morals, but as myths they shape the way that we relate to our environment and to life itself. 

So don’t worry. This isn’t a narrative in the conventional sense. By attacking the larger philosophical questions, I’ll break down—seven with a single blow—the straw, stick and brick huts of our cosmology. And then, never fear, I’ll go on reconstruct the wreckage into a giant beanstalk that will win us the golden goose. How’s that for a Grimm day’s work?